ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Tuncer Bakirhan, a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish parliament revealed on Tuesday that Abdullah Ocalan, jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) will “make a historic call” for a permanent solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey.
"Mr. Ocalan is preparing to make a historic call in the coming days for a radical and permanent solution to the Kurdish problem and the construction of a democratic Turkey,” Bakirhan, a lawmaker and co-leader of the pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) said in the Turkish parliament, said on Tuesday.
“Yes, Mr. Ocalan is preparing to make a historic call,” Bakirhan repeated. “He will make this historic call in a short time.”
The co-president of the DEM Party detailed, “It could be February 15, it could be a little later... I do not know. But, yes, he will make a historic call.”
Ocalan has been serving a life sentence at Imrali prison, a small but high-security facility on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, since February 1999.
In a major move, Devlet Bahceli, head of the far-right Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), in October proposed allowing Ocalan to appear before the legislature and declare the dissolution of the PKK, an initiative immediately endorsed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish political landscape.
This initiative led to the DEM Party MPs Buldan and Onder being granted the rare permission to meet with Ocalan at Imrali prison twice on January 22 and in late December, amid a shift in Ankara’s stance of prohibiting contact with the PKK founder.
MHP’s Bahceli, however, after the first meeting with Ocalan, warned that any other meeting with jailed Ocalan must end in the dissolution of the PKK.
In 2013, the Turkish government, led by then-prime minister and current President Erdogan, entered a peace process with the PKK aimed at ending the decades of conflict and bloodshed. The truce was short-lived and collapsed in July 2015, leading to violent clashes in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish areas.
The PKK is an armed group that has fought for increased Kurdish rights in Turkey for decades. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara.
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